How to get more visitors to your social media sites

Social media is fast become the number one marketing and advertising tool of today. With 95% of under 35s having at least one profile, it is an outstanding way of targeting a specific audience.

Social business profiles have become really important for any kind of business. As a company, your social media profiles are the window display of what you sell. Clients, customer, users and partners need to know what you can bring to the party.

The quickest, most efficient way that they are likely to do this is by visiting your social media business profiles.
As far back as five years ago, Forbes was highlighting the importance of effective social media profiles – both to sell and brand yourself and to attract clients.

So, if the number of visitors to your site is less than it should be, what can you do to increase traffic?
Use LinkedIn

It is a site specifically designed for businesses and entrepreneurs. Members of this enormous social media group (it has 500 million worldwide) can be extremely valuable to your business.

Online Marketing Specialist also recommends using LinkedIn. Unlike sites like Facebook this site is all about business and what you do and what you sell or what kind of services you provide.

Sell your profile

It is really important to sell your profile, whether it is on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter.

And that means attaching a link on your website, on your business cards, on your invoices – indeed on anything that might get people to look further and find your services or product.

American Express looked into this field and in one of their studies they found that simply including your profile address next to, say, your phone number can show a definite increase in visitors.

Make your profile accessible

Ecommerce software company – Comalytics have told us that anybody looking to use your services or buy anything more than a cabbage from you, is going to want to know a bit about the person they are dealing with.

Therefore, include a range of SEO terms on your site. This maximises the opportunity of your customers finding you.
To further enhance the effect of the terms, embed them in the page title and description of your profile.

Invest in digital business cards

Bumping, or sharing information electronically, is a fast and effective way of communicating.

It also means that the person receiving your details actually wants them. After all, in order to be bumped, the recipient has either asked for your details, or had them recommended.

It’s a bit like the word-game we used to play as kids, the one where you had to pass a message to the person next to you, but you add an extra word. So, the message grows exponentially.

Similarly, when your business card is bumped, more people have the capacity to “bump” it on.
Just remember to include your profile details on the digital card.

Change your mindset regarding your profile

Just think for a minute about website design. Landing pages have an instant impact. If they don’t the searcher will leave this website and finding something new – and thus the business is lost.

When people search for YOU, if they are successful, then their search is going to lead them to one of the profile pages of your social media accounts.

Therefore, treat it like a landing page. You want people to read it.

Make sure that there is a good pic of yourself working. Do remember that this is the first thing a would-be customer will see. That shot of you half drunk at your best friend’s wedding might have been fun, but it’s not right for a business profile. Think as well of the SEO opportunities. Name the photo after your business, or with a keyword you want to promote, before you upload it.

Use every opportunity on your profile page to promote yourself or your business, whichever is the aim of the page.
Again, this is about quality more than quantity. Whilst clever use of SEO will get the page spotted more often, a hundred hits that lead to little are of less use than ten that leads to results.

And a result might be as simple as the page being shared with others.

Don’t overdo it.

Don’t let your profile page become too over complicated. Think again why you want people to see this page. If it is to promote yourself, and therefore your product, in a positive light. Avoid any negative or useless information. They don’t really need to know the problems you had finding a plumber? Or that almond milk is better than normal milk.
Streamlining, that is the key.

Practical Matters

There are a number of simple procedures you can follow to increase views. These seem strikingly obvious.
But, they are the kind of basics that are so often overlooked when people are thinking big.

• Make your profile icons easy to find on your website.
• Include the links in employee’s signatures
• Include your twitter handle on all marketing information. It’s probably more relevant than your address these days.
• Ask people to retweet your messages. (Not on Facebook, as it is not allowed). Simply asking improves the number of retweets by 1200%. That is scary. Not that it happens, but that we have become so technologically introverted that we forget to ask a simple request.
• Use Hashtags (this is really effective). The Weidert Group are a successful marketing agency, and their research demonstrated that hashtags double the amount of engagement achieved.

Blog

Blogging gets you noticed. It might take time to build up a following, but with clever use of SEO, taking advantage of group options to market your blog and using sites like LindedIn people read what you say.

By including your social media contact details in and on the blog, people will look to find out more about you.

Quality not quantity

A couple of years ago the Socialmediatoday recognised that, when it came to social media marketing, the key to success was quality over quantity.

This has implications for how you operate your social media profiles. Firstly, it is not necessary to be everywhere.
More important is that the content of your posts is what your audience is seeking. If it is, then they will find it.
A desperate search to increase followers can mean that you lose sight of what you are trying to achieve. Your goals can become clouded.

For example, if your goal is to increase your number of customers, a stream of ‘likes’ can seem encouraging.
Oddly, though, your bank thinks otherwise. They like an income stream but have no interest in your incoming ‘like’ stream.

Audit your social media effectiveness

This will really help you to identify the quality of your social media profiles. Work out the elements that lead to concrete orders or contracts. Decipher the traffic that actively promotes you. See which parts of your profile actually serve no business purpose, either direct or indirect.

This information can help you to improve the quality of what you post. Increasing traffic is not the primary aim here, because your goal is conversion of those visits into business. But the unintended effect is probably that, because your information is more relevant to those you seek to attract, overall visits will increase.

First Impressions

People will visit your website to know about your business, they will visit your social media profile if they want to know more about you first.

Satisfy them.

Think carefully about what to include and not include. Their aim might be to find out about you, but your goal is to turn them into customers.

However, that means giving them an insight into you as a person. Make sure that your profile is complete, with plenty of easily accessible information, but don’t tell your life story.

Without seeming too gadget conscious (unless that is your aim) use tools that promote your goals. Video is effective and relatively simple to add. As with your image, take the advantage of uploading a video by naming it in a way that promotes SEO, for example with your business name, or trade.

Get Endorsed

Think yourself about who you trust.

At the top of that list are probably friends and family. Anybody can write a wonderful profile, claim the outstanding quality of their service and, to be honest, say anything else they want. However, nobody has to agree with them.
Simply ask clients, customers, others you meet and anybody who has contact with you or your business to endorse you. Most will, it is easy enough to do.

Hootsuite identifies LinkedIn, with its dedicated platforms, as a particularly effective when it comes to site endorsements.

Your social media profile is a useful and easily adaptable tool in your marketing box. Make the most of it.